HOK’s workplace design teams have always worked to solve problems and improve the human experience. That will never change. What is changing—even more so as we reimagine aspects of the built environment in response to COVID-19—is our culture’s heightened awareness of design.
Websites like Apartment Therapy and Houzz, social channels like Instagram and Pinterest, and TV networks like HGTV have given the world 24-7 access to design ideas and inspiration.This growing interest in design is a welcome, natural development. People have an innate attraction to beauty, and wider participation in the design process only enriches the result. The challenge is that, while everyone may have their own ideas and opinions about design—and, thanks to the plethora of free design apps and inexpensive software, the tools to practice it—not everyone is a designer. Great design doesn’t emerge from a well-curated Pinterest board or hours of binge watching a show. Instead, it’s the product of education and experience, inspiration and rigor.
For this issue of HOK Forward, we asked several HOK workplace strategists and designers to explore the effects of this elevated interest in design across six universal topics:
- Aesthetics
- Design Influencers
- Stylization
- Globalization
- Experience
- Personalization
Enjoy this issue of HOK Forward, which even in the midst of a global pandemic, reinforced to us that there has never been a more exhilarating time to be a designer.
Read the full issue of HOK Forward.